VOODOO IN THE PARK

One Sunday evening in spring, my landlord knocked on my door and said, “Come with me, I have something to show you in the park.” Although I had made it a point to not enter the park after dark, I was intrigued. I grabbed a jacket and followed him down the stairs and out the front door. We crossed Ocean Avenue and entered the park at Lincoln Avenue. From there we walked onto the grass and into a lightly wooded area.

From a distance I could hear a crowd of people, and as we got closer, I saw a long table laden with flowers, candles, and food. The people milling around it were dressed all in white. The ladies wore long white skirts with long blouses over them and white scarf turbans. The men were in white pants and shirts.

My landlord whispered, “It's a Voodoo meeting.” Voodoo is a Haitian religion, and I was thinking this group could be practicing Candomblé, a South American religion begun in Bahai, or Santaría a creole Caribbean religion. All three of these religions are based African religions – Fon, Yoruba, Bantu – brought to the Western Hemisphere by slaves.

As we got closer to the group, a very friendly woman approached us and said in a Caribbean accent, “Would you like something to eat? Please help yourself?”

I thanked her and declined, feeling nosy and out of place. The landlord had some food.  

“We are having a healing ceremony for a friend who is very sick,” this woman explained. “We just finished.”

I had only seen these kinds of ceremonies in the media – television and movies – and I was sorry I missed it here in the park, mainly because I know that the media exploits African religions, making them scary and silly – a holdover from slavery days. And I would like to have seen this healing ceremony. I never heard about or saw another one.

We only stayed that few minutes and then returned to the house. I doubted I would ever recognize these women if I saw them in the neighborhood. But certainly these people in the park were friendlier and more welcoming than the Christian church members near the house who glared at me, if they looked at me at all, if I happened to pass through the crowd while church was letting out. I never considered attending a service there.

Members of this church near the house were legally permitted to double-park on Sundays, blocking the neighborhood cars until noon. I don't know if this happened with other churches in Brooklyn, but it seemed to me that since public transportation ran on Sundays, they might have been “legally permitted” to ride the subway or busses. Not my call.

I only ever entered the park after dark once after that night. A tall, husky male friend and I walked from Park Slope to Lefferts Gardens at 10 o'clock one evening. We were on a narrow, hilly, dirt trail between a dense wall of bushes and trees on either side. It was really dark and I was really glad when we reached the flat area near Ocean Avenue. I'm pretty brave, but I would never take that walk alone.

Post by Alana Cash

THAT FIRST NOVEMBER IN BROOKLYN

A couple of weeks into November, leaves were blowing off the trees in en masse and those that remained shivered in the wind.  Skeletal branches looked lonely, especially in the late afternoons as they were outlined against a darkening sky.  Sunset was at 4:30 and getting earlier every day.  The air was cold.  At night the temperature was in the 40s.  The high temperature during the day was maybe 58° degrees.  It was 81° when I had left Austin just a few weeks before.  Ironically, four years later, these Brooklyn temperatures would seem warm to me and I could go outside without a jacket on a 55° day.  But not that first year. 

Parking on the street in front of the house was alternate-side morning and afternoon.  That meant, if I was parked on the side of the street with traffic flowing toward Manhattan, I had to throw a coat over my pajamas and go outside at 7 a.m. and move the car.  I wasn’t alone those mornings, double parked, as I sat in my cold vehicle waiting for someone to move out of a parking space, headed for work.  There were always half a dozen other people waiting along with me to grab up a spot and get back inside our warm homes.  At 4 p.m., I had to move the car again for the traffic returning after the workday, which put a weekday curfew on my excursions away from home. 

Parking issues got old in a hurry, especially since I rarely drove the car, although I did make a couple of visits to Red Hook and drove to Coney Island once or twice – no way would I drive into Manhattan.  On Sunday mornings, the people attending the church up the block  had the right to double park on our side of the street, blocking every car from exiting until noon. 

I decided to park the car in Park Slope where I could leave it for a week at a time, moving it only for street-cleaning.  It now seems so strange to think about parking a mile from home, having to take a train or walk over to move the car, but that’s the City.  Unfortunately, because I had to drive around for a while in Park Slope looking for an open spot on streets crowded bumper to bumper with parked cars, 

I sometimes got confused about the location where I left my car.  When it was time to move it, I had to stroll the streets looking for it.  Once, I completely forgot to move the car for street cleaning and got a ticket – called a “summons” in New York.  This was one of the two summons I would receive during my tenure in Brooklyn.

The last straw for parking was the day of a blizzard in December.  It was 10º and windy.  The locks on my car froze and I couldn’t open the door.  I stood there for about an hour, trying to unlock the car.  Parking Control drove by not offering any help (or a summons either, thankfully).  Finally, a man loaned me a cigarette lighter to warm up my car key.  After about five tries with the heated key, the car door opened and I got inside where it felt like a refrigerator freezer, but not windy.  I moved the car across the street and went home.  Immediately, I put an ad online to sell the car.  I never missed it. 

But in November, something was happening in Brooklyn and the rest of the City in November. There was something in the air. Expectations.  Animation. A slightly more positive attitude.  Because the holidays were coming…

Post by Alana Cash